Minded Of The Morrigan
by tielan
Summary: In a universe where all humans have daemon companions, it is taboo to touch another person's daemon. But what about when contact is unavoidable?
1. Chapter 1

**NOTES**: written for Fandom Stocking - someone asked for an Avengers fusion AU and this is what I came up with: a fusion with His Dark Materials, involving daemons. Two chapters so far. There may be more in future.

**The Daughter Of Crows**

His mind still reeling with the news of Coulson's death, Steve feels slightly dazed as he makes his way through the belly of the helicarrier, Saavi's head close by his thigh. Guilt and grief and disbelief and anger churn beneath his breastbone, a melange of feelings he doesn't know how to parse.

"This modern world is so confusing," Saavi voices for both of them, aware of his disquiet through the bond between them. "I miss the old days."

So does Steve. But, "We're here, now," he says. "And we need to stop Loki and whatever he's planning to do with the Tesseract."

"That goes without saying," his dæmon murmurs. "But everything's so different now."

They come from an older time, another age, with different mores and different technology, and nothing's the same as it used to be – except, perhaps, the depravity of human nature.

As they pass a side corridor, Saavi stops, ears pricked. Steve turns. "What is it?"

"Something..." Abruptly, she lopes off down the side corridor, her golden pelt gleaming in the stark light of the corridor overheads.

Steve jogs after her, careful when he turns a corridor and finds part of the bulkhead crushed inwards, the floor buckled upwards and the side supports shoved into the corridor. "Saavi?"

"Still going," she calls, her voice calm and reassuring but also distant. "It'll be a narrow fit, but you have to come through."

He climbs in with care, wondering what caused this – then realises it could only have been Banner as the Hulk. Or possibly his dæmon. This would be something to see – the transformation from a chameleon to a bull African elephant.

_Focus,_ he tells himself as he steps over steel grating that lies warped like melted wax. "Saavi?"

"Over here," she says, and now he feels the breath of moving air – tinged with smoke and oil from the engines Stark just fixed. "Near the hull breach."

Steve eases himself past a set of broken-off struts and hurries to the end of the corridor where Saavi is crouched by a tumble of fallen boxes.

"He's under there," she says. "Isthus. The crow."

* * *

"_She's got no dæmon!" Saavi murmurs to Steve as the solitary woman walks up to Fury and reports all systems running at full. His dæmon's fur twitches, and her tail thrashes with alarm. Steve instinctively reaches out to touch her – the contact soothing them both._

"_She must," Steve says, just as quietly. People always have dæmons – unless they've been _cut_. And she doesn't behave like a person who's been _cut_. Her eyes are clear and her movements brisk as she goes about her business on the bridge of the SHIELD airship - unlike the mindless, empty things that Steve remembers fighting on base after base after base during the war in Europe._

_He doesn't dare ask where her dæmon is – not when everyone else treats her presence as utterly normal – although there are a few nervous glances from several younger-looking technicians. So this isn't something from the future – just an anomaly in the present._

_Relieved, Steve forces himself to pay attention to Fury's words and not turn his head to look at the woman who walks without a dæmon by her side, without an other half._

_Although he glances up when a cawing cry echoes through the room and a dark feathered shape swoops in through the high window left open far above their heads, circles once around the ceiling perches, and drops neatly to her shoulder, answering the question of where her dæmon was._

_She lifts her face momentarily from her work and the pointed beak slides along her cheek like a caress._

* * *

Steve shifts the boxes very carefully as the dæmons talk. He doesn't want to inadvertently squash the dæmon who, from the sound of it, isn't in a good way.

"Was doing recon," is all the other dæmon says, hoarsely. "Aerin attacked me. Ducked in to hide and then the boxes fell."

It's as brisk as a report – as brisk as Lieutenant Hill at her most clipped and concise. Like woman, like dæmon, Steve thinks. Then he chides himself for being uncharitable. It's not as though he knows anything about Maria Hill other than her name and what she does on the helicarrier. It might just be that she's pure soldier when she's working, confining the nuances of her personality to her private life.

Then he gets the last box away and realises that the dæmon is injured – one splayed wing pinned beneath a strut which Steve strains to lift enough for Isthus to roll out from under it.

Or try. The crow squawks with pain, and it's up to Saavi to gently grab one of his legs in her mouth and pull him out.

Saavi sniffs around the wing as Steve lets the strut down again. "I think the wing's broken. You'll need to—" But here she stops, her large golden eyes suddenly reserved.

A dæmon interacts with their person, and with other dæmons on occasion. But contact between a person and another person's dæmon is…intimate. It's like touching someone else's soul. There are reputedly people who've been lovers for years who've never touched the other person's dæmon, although Steve doesn't see how that's possible – if you're intimate with someone, then surely—but he's distracting himself.

"I'm sorry," he tells Isthus, and while the crow doesn't have an expression Steve can read, he has the impression the dæmon is steeling itself.

The first brush of feathers is softer than Steve expected – the shining black plumage not as rough as he thought. He runs his fingers carefully along the leading edge of the wing. "Tell me when it hurts."

He's gentle – as gentle as he can be while his pulse races and sweat beads on his brow before being cooled by the flow of air in from outside. Still, Isthus says nothing, although he twitches as Steve probes where the strut fell on the dæmon. He can feel the break along the wing and knows that it needs support even before the crow moves.

"Can't fold it." The words are rough, as though forced from the dæmon. Then, softer, it says, "Want Maria."

Steve glances at Saavi, but she shakes her head. "You'll have to carry him back in your hands, supporting his wing against your forearm."

There's nothing else with which to carry Isthus. Steve takes a deep breath and eases his hand under the broken wing and under the crow's body, feeling the shuddering tension in the dæmon's body at being touched by someone other than its own human.

He feels dirty, touching the crow – not _Isthus_ specifically, but someone else's dæmon. A woman's dæmon, too – a reserved, careful, self-contained woman who he's never actually met, although he noticed her of course, and Coulson spoke of her.

_Get over it, Rogers,_ he tells himself as they reach the first obstacle back – and realises he can't navigate it with his hands full of Isthus.

"Fold it," says the crow. "Then hold against chest."

"Won't that hurt more?"

"Can't be helped. Do it." But Isthus squawks with pain as Steve folds the wing in, the tiny chest rising and falling with rough breaths.

"I'm going ahead for help," Saavi says as she slips through the gap with easy feline grace. "You'll be okay."

It's not a question, even if Steve thinks her faith is sorely misplaced. Holding Isthus now feels like a violation – not only touching the dæmon, but having caused it pain, too, no matter how benign. It's worse because he's holding Isthus against his chest, the way he used to hold Saavi when they were young – the cub almost too large for the frailty of his body – but this certainly isn't Saavi.

Still, now Steve can move through the twisted corridors of the helicarrier, sure of his step now that he has one hand free as the other cradles Isthus to his chest.

And then they're past the warped bulkhead and at the main corridor, there's the sound of running footsteps, and Saavi bounds around the corner and up to him, her head rubbing at his knee as Lieutenant Hill swings around the corner at a run and skids to a stop as she sees him, her whole body tensing as she realises what he's done.

There's a scrape across her cheekbone where something hit her, the smear of blood crusting dark against her skin, and her eyes – blue-grey or green-blue? – flick from her dæmon to Steve and then back to Isthus again. Then she walks towards him with all the wariness of a wild creature and holds out her hands to take Isthus back again.

Steve feels hot all over his chest and cheeks as he eases the crow into her hands. "I'm sorry," he says, and she looks up at him.

"It was necessary," she says, her voice crisp and terse as she gathers her dæmon back to her heart, careful of the broken wing. "Thank you."

But there's no softening in her voice, and Steve thinks he's never heard a gratitude sound so much like a curse.

* * *

Stark offers them spaces to stay that night. _You don't want to go back to the helicarrier,_ he says, _believe me._

Steve doesn't much like the idea of being beholden to Stark either, but he's got nowhere else to go. So he ignores the way Velys growls at Saavi, or the way Saavi's ears fold back at the wolf, and takes the offer. Maybe Stark isn't as bad as Steve thought he was, and he might have saved the day but he's still not a patch on his father or any of the other men Steve knew back in his time.

Saavi is curling up on the floor by the mattress when Steve remembers Lieutenant Hill and her dæmon. "I asked Barin," she says when he murmurs the thought into the darkness around them. "Agent Romanoff checked with SHIELD, and the reports say the wing is set and Isthus will recover fully."

"Good," Steve says, and means it.

But on the cusp of sleep, he remembers the way Isthus' little heart fluttered against his fingertips, and wonders what it would be like to feel Lieutenant Hill's heart pounding, thrilling, under his palm.

**tbc**


	2. Chapter 2

**The Lion-Hearted**

Search and rescue is a nasty job at the best of times. In the aftermath of a battle, it's particularly horrible. But it needs to be done, and there's no other human-dæmon pair so uniquely qualified for it – a bird dæmon that can fly so far from her without pain, and a woman with military training.

The geneticists have studied her, but so far as anyone can tell, Maria will live a normal life, with a slightly extraordinary dæmon, and die ordinary. It happens, occasionally, when the son-lines of witches cross and a girl is born a little different, but not so much that she's a throwback to her grandmother and great-grandmothers' line.

"Too dark, too close, too strange," is Isthus' pronouncement as he flies back to her along the twisting, tunnelling corridor of the alien ship. "But none of ours. Just _them_."

"The sabotage team wouldn't have gotten this far," Maria murmurs, keeping her voice low in case there's still something here. "They only had to destroy the drives."

The clack of Isthus' beak is like a snort. "'Only'? With Captain Rogers leading the insertion team?"

"True." Maria exhales. "And something brought the ship down in the middle of the desert instead of in LA. It's the sort of thing he'd do."

"You still don't like him."

"He's a hero," she replies dryly. "You know how I feel about that."

"About heroes, or about him?"

She twitches the shoulder he's sitting on. "Go look for more of our people and stop making trouble!"

His caw is laughter as he soars away along the dimly lit corridor, and Maria grimaces as she shines the flashlight down one of the dark side corridors and taps her earpiece to initiate contact with the S&R head. "Sitwell?"

"Copy you, Hill. Found anything?"

"None of ours."

The exhalation is brief. "Same reports coming in from all over. No sign of them, no sign of their dæmons… Jesus, Hill, is it possible we lost the whole insertion team?"

Distantly down the corridor, there's the sound of something shifting, moving… "Sitwell. I've got something. Stand by…" She shines the flashlight down the long dark corridor that twists and turns like something writhed along it in its creation, trying to ignore the way her neck crawls at the sound.

There's a spark and a sizzle, and then an anguished yowl. Maria catches her breath, then she's moving off down the corridor. "Saavi?"

"Lieutenant?" The smooth, feline voice sounds surprised – and edged.

"Sitwell, I've found Rogers' dæmon. Triangulate me."

"Triangulating… Yeah, we got you. I'm sending two others your way – Simmons and Huang."

"Copy that."

Maria sets her headset to transmit without broadcasting her every word, and heads off down the corridor to where a cluster of trailing cordlike things swing in a curtain across the tunnel. On the other side of the curtain, Saavi paces, her tail thrashing in urgency. "His leg is broken and I can't get past these – they _bit_ me…"

"Okay," Maria says. "It's okay. Give me a moment." The last thing she needs is a distressed dæmon on her hands as she tries to think things through. The 'wires' – at least, she presumes they're wires - run up to the ceiling then vanish into the body of the alien ship above them, and she has no idea where they go or what they do or how to stop them transmitting whatever energy it is that kept this ship flying.

"Fine," she says, softly, more to herself than to Saavi. "We'll do this the experimental way."

And she shucks her jacket, sticks her hands back through the arms, and, careful to keep her head away from the trailing cords, moves forward to gather them up, hoping they don't shock her into insensibility.

* * *

"_The famous Captain America?" Isthus murmurs in her ear as the search for Loki commences._

"_Apparently," Maria murmurs back, her gaze following the computer composite coming together along the side of the control room. "Along with the extremely dangerous Dr. Banner." She still can't believe Fury brought Banner on the helicarrier. That's a lot of faith in the man's control – especially given what happened the last time the man was in the US. "Did you find the breach?"_

"_Weakness," he says. "Not yet a breach. G-435-A. Something damaged a panel while we were in the water. Just a crack."_

_Maria cross-checks the sensor readings for compartment G-435-A. "The Compartment sealed off before we took to air." It's not a problem now, but she records it nevertheless, setting it to one of the maintenance logs. It's a minor repair, but something to be looked into later. On a craft this size – especially one that flies – small issues can turn into big ones very easily._

_Over by the computer banks, it seems they've located Loki somewhere in Europe and are getting ready to 'suit up'. _

_He doesn't glance at her as he passes, but his dæmon does – the tawny eyes narrowing as she pads past on near-silent feet. The legend claims she used to be a mere kitten before Rogers became what he is, but Coulson says Rogers' dæmon was always a lioness – and how Erskine knew the man was worthy to take the serum._

* * *

The flashlight flickers out just past the second turn, leaving Maria and Saavi in absolute darkness.

"Well," she says grimly, "this is good."

Something brushes her leg and a moment later, she flinches as a furred head butts her hand. She jerks back, catching her heel and falling against the side of the tunnel.

"I left a trail," Saavi says. "I can lead us both."

"I can't see."

There's a pause, then, "You must rest your hand on my neck."

"I…" _can't do that._ The words freeze on Maria's tongue. Touching another person's dæmon is taboo, yes, but Steve did it for Isthus when he was in need. Doesn't she owe him this?

She swallows, moistening her dry mouth, and stands up, one hand groping into the darkness before soft, warm pelt sleeks down under her fingers. It takes all her self-control not to jerk back from the contact, but she tells herself to get a grip – and digs her fingers gently into the lioness' hide as the creature sidles up against her leg.

"Stay with me," Saavi says, calmer than any dæmon has a right to be when being manhandled by another person. Then she begins to move, and Maria moves with her, pacing the giant cat and trying not to trip over her own feet, the uneven floor of the tunnel, or the dæmon.

"What happened?" She asks the question more to break the silence than to really know. After all, she could ask for the report from Rogers once she finds him, and dæmons don't usually talk to other people. But the darkness is pressing all around her and she needs something to take her mind off the thought that the velvet-soft pelt under her fingers is Captain America's dæmon.

"We brought the ship down."

"Other than that. The sabotage worked, but how did you get it to crash in the desert?"

"They boosted the power," Saavi says after a moment, as though she had to think of the answer. Maria nods to herself, thinking it explains the power burnout through the alien ship. "I don't know how. Steve thought it would be better to bring it down further out if we couldn't before the city. And he was concerned about making waves."

"A tsunami," Maria murmurs, moving through the twists and turns of darkness, the velvety warmth of the dæmon guiding her. "Good thinking."

There's a faint lessening of the absolute blackness ahead of them. It grows slowly into a faint glow, and then a bright light halfway along the corridor, where Rogers sits in the pool of light cast by his flashlight, his shield by his side, his jaw set, his hands pressing against his thigh.

"Saavi?"

"I've brought the Lieutenant," she calls as they make their way down the corridor towards him.

"Sorry to make you come all this way to rescue me," he says, his voice tight with pain, but with an edge of something like relief.

"Sorry to—" Abruptly, Maria realises she still has her hand in Saavi's pelt in spite of having enough light to see by. She jerks her hand away from the dæmon's back, and meets Rogers' eyes at the same time. "Sorry to take so long to get here," she says, carefully even and without even a hint of the discomposure she feels. "What happened to you?"

"I think I cracked it when we came down," he says tightly, indicating his leg as she kneels down beside him. "Have you found the others?"

"They're still alive?"

"I left them alive but we came down so hard—we missed the city, right?"

"Yeah," she slings the pack around and rummages for a shot of painkiller. "You did good."

His mouth twitches. "High praise, coming from you."

Maria rears back. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Easy, Lieutenant. Only that you set high standards. If I meet yours… It's a compliment."

"Sorry," she mutters, feeling her ears heat a little. Then, "This is going to sting."

He makes a noise like a laugh. "Penicillin." At her querying glance he shrugs. "Erskine said it to me when—During the—It's nothing."

Not quite nothing. But very definitely private.

Maria doesn't ask. Instead she injects him and sets about splinting the leg so they can get him out of here – and ignoring his closeness. Although she doesn't quite know how they're going to do that since the way back out is long and twisty and not really suitable for a man with a broken leg.

He hisses once, when she's trying to bind the leg to the extendable splint in her aid pack. "Sorry," he says, although Maria's not sure if the apology is to her or Saavi, since he has his hand fisted in the folds of his dæmon's hide and that has to hurt – even a little.

"Saavi said you boosted the power – did you do that?" Maria eases the strap under his thigh again, then over and clip and tighten.

"No," he breathes. "Arvad. He's getting…good with alien systems."

"He's getting way too much practise."

"We need to…go easy on the…alien invasions."

"I wish we could," Maria exhales. "It's not perfect, but it'll do for a field dressing."

There's a caw and a rustle of feathers and Isthus swoops in. "Cavalry's coming." His weight is comforting on her shoulder as she instinctively turns so he can rub the side of his beak along her cheek. Her own piece of soul, no matter how far he flies.

When she looks back, Rogers and Saavi are watching them with the same unblinking gaze.

* * *

She finally gets some sleep nearly a day later, the downtime enforced by Fury who tells her she'll be no use to them if she kills herself from fatigue. Alieta makes shooing motions at them with her paws, her gestures putting Maria in mind of nothing so much as a fussy mother, then snaps her teeth at Isthus when he tries to peck at her.

Maria shucks her boots and socks but doesn't bother with her jumpsuit, crawls into the bed and is sacked out before Isthus has even settled himself on his perch.

Hours later, she jerks awake, hot and damp in the too-confining suit. And tells herself the vague memory of the softness of Saavi's pelt under her palm is no excuse for dreaming of Rogers' hair sliding silky through her fingers.

**- fin - **

**NOTES**: Leese3973 asked for a guide as to whose dæmon is what. In my head it runs somewhat like this: Maria - Isthus (crow), Steve - Saavi (lion), Clint - Aerin (hawk), Natasha - Barin (spider), Stark - Velys (wolf), Banner - Damira (chameleon/elephant), Fury - Alieta (gorilla), Coulson - Piara (polecat). They're all opposite-gender, fairly standard dæmons. Maria and Isthus are unusual in that they can be separated by up to hundreds of miles before the connection between then begins to hurt and it's generally attributed to her grandmother and great-grandmother, both of whom were witches (like Serafina Pekkala). It's not unknown for such genetic oddities to turn up when the son-lines of witches are crossbred, but it's not very common either.

I'm working on another four sections to this story, but I don't know when or even if they'll ever get done.

Thanks for reading!


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